Hibbett Reading - Dawson

All roads lead back to Seidensticker.  It's incredible how often he comes up in the readings.  I get the impression that he was likely the most influential Japanese -> English translator of all time.  Anyways, Hibbett mentions how the "Triumvirate" of authors were criticized for "aestheticizing" Japan in their written works.  This made me curious over whether or not that contributed heavily to the Western view of Japan up until recently, as a land of samurai and geisha.  I looked into it, and it seems like they were at least partially responsible for it.  But it mostly came to that view about Japan being what sold in the West at the time.  So of course, if people only buy and consume things that give that impression, then that is the impression they will hold.

I did notice that Hibbett was the second source we've read that has mentioned the contrast of the light and dark of kanji and kana characters -- I believe the first was the Seidensticker speech.  I find that especially interesting, as I've never noticed it myself when reading Japanese.  Is it really used as a literary technique?  Maybe I just don't have enough exposure to it to recognize it in action?  Or perhaps, further still, do modern writers not utilize it in the same way the writers of their age did?  I was actually really curious, so I did some research, and it seems my last guess was correct.  When Japanese was physically written, the flow of kanji and kana characters played a very important role in determining the visual rhythm of the text, which is what Seidensticker and Hibbett noticed.  But nowadays, with everything being typed and printed with modern printing technology, you don't get that same effect to anywhere near the same degree, and as such, both authors and readers don't pay much attention to it anymore.  

I think it's also very funny that Futabatei Shimei was mentioned in this reading, as we were *just* talking in LJ410, History of the Japanese Language, about how he helped revolutionize written Japanese by converging it with the spoken form via his translation of the Russian work this piece mentions.

Finally, I quite sympathize with the translation conundrum he brought up.  It remains such a fine line between making the text natural sounding in English vs. over translating and losing the original nuance.  But going too far in the other direction is equally as bad, if not worse.  There is a fine line in the middle you must walk in order to stay true to the author's original intentions while at the same time creating an enjoyable experience for the reader.

Dawson Maska